Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos has tweeted asking for advice on his philanthropy. At the time of writing he’s had more than 8,000 retweets and 30,000 replies. The most important sentence in his request is “I’m thinking I want much of my philanthropic activity to be helping people in the here and now — the short term”. He points to the example of Mary's Place in Seattle providing shelter, support and employment training to people facing homelessness. Within it he also welcomed challenge, here’s my response.

Dear Jeff,

I’ve been looking at the replies to your tweet and they unfortunately betray the challenge of your approach and the wider problem our sector faces.

Philanthropy is a choice and as such should be commended in all (most) its forms. However, it also comes with responsibility — a finite amount of money that can be used anywhere on a spectrum from “very well” to “very badly”.

Jeff Bezos (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

My worry is that you and I (having never met or spoken!) both turn around in ten years and reflect that this money was spent badly rather than well and that the opportunity to serve the planet and its people was missed.

I worry about this is because of two things.

The first issue I have is who you are asking. Don’t ask Twitter. It is mainly an American platform (so lack of insight from around the world), it is a disproportionately male and disproportionately from more privileged user groups. I have a huge amount of respect for people who ask communities for insight into strategy but how many people who benefit from the work of Mary’s Place's are on Twitter? How many would choose to be consulted through a 140-character call for ideas. Do you really want to make decisions about them by consulting a platform which isolates the people you wish to serve as individuals and bypasses complexity for quick wins? Take some time. Listen to the communities you wish to serve and you’ll make good decisions.

Secondly, the idea itself that you should spend your money on short term activity. You can add as many times as you like “and have lasting impact” but it’s an impossible oxymoron to focusing short term. It’s the business equivalent of looking for “safe, proven investments” with imminent 10-fold returns. It doesn’t happen.

If you can find any examples in history where short term philanthropy has led to long term change that you can replicate, then please do. When you can’t, please reflect that this is a flawed strategy based on a misunderstanding of how social change happens and a longing for instant personal gratification that clouds judgement. I know that sounds harsh but it is the truth, and better someone make it clear than the line of well-meaning sycophants who will adorn your inbox with pointers towards the charity their kid works for.

Where you are able to combine heroic short term ‘saving’ of people with long term impact, it will no doubt be by piggy-backing on the work of others who have sweated the long term. Give your money to the Gates Foundation and we may well finally wipe out Polio — taking a huge step forward as this has only been done once before in history. It’s not a bad idea at all and there are a lot worse ways to spend your money. But bear in mind that you are simply jumping on the end of a long, complex journey that has been defined by a willingness to look long term over short.

Philanthropy has a few things going for it — it is independent and unaccountable, long term and, ideally, expert. It is when it uses these strengths as unique from partisan governments on short election cycles that it makes a difference.

There is nowhere, anywhere that you will find evidence that late intervention is a better way of approaching a project than early intervention. The problem is not the people who need to be “fixed” or “saved” it is the system that has failed them. We need philanthropists to get their heads up and do the hard work of funding work to figure out how we might reform failing systems and building civil movements and expert voice work that mean that leaving things as they are is not an option. Else you will go back to Mary’s Place in 20 years’ time and see the children of the people there today and realise that whilst some were helped, the point was missed and fundamental injustices went unaddressed in our quest for short term impact.

Good luck Jeff, doing good in the world is harder than making money but if people with your skill set put in as much effort to the former as they do the latter, amazing things can happen.